ades were looking in all directions, and Talbot
cleared his throat a number of times before he replied.

"Why, Frank," he said gently, at last, "of course we'll take it--we
never dreamed--of course--it was stupid of us, I'll admit. Naturally, I
see just how you feel----"

"It comes to about seven hundred apiece, don't it?" drawled Yank.

The commonplace remark saved the situation from bathos, as I am now
certain shrewd old Yank knew it would.

"What are you going to do with your shares, boys?" asked Talbot after a
while. "Going back home, or mining? Speak up, Yank."

Yank spat accurately out the open window.

"I've been figgering," he replied. "And when you come right down to it,
what's the use of going back? Ain't it just an idee we got that it's the
proper thing to do? What's the matter with this country, anyway--barring
mining?"

"Barring mining?" echoed Talbot.

"To hell with mining!" said Yank; "it's all right for a vacation, but it
ain't noways a white man's stiddy work. Well, we had our vacation."

"Then you're not going back to the mines?"

"Not any!" stated Yank emphatically.

"Nor home?"

"No."

"What then?"

"I'm going to take up a farm up thar whar the Pine boys is settled, and
I'm going to enjoy life reasonable. Thar's good soil, and thar's water;
thar's pleasant prospects, and lots of game and fish. What more does a
man want? And what makes me sick is that it's been thar all the time and
it's only just this minute I've come to see it."

"Mines for you, Johnny, or home?" asked Talbot.

"Me, home?" cried Johnny; "why----" he checked himself, and added more
quietly. "No, I'm not going home. There's nothing there for me but a
good time, when you come right down to it. And mines? It strikes me that
fresh gold is easy to get, but almighty hard to keep."

"You never said a truer word than that, Johnny," I put in.

"Besides which, I quit mining some time ago, as you remember," went on
Johnny, "due to an artistic aversion to hard work," he added.

"Any plans?" asked Talbot.

"I think I'll just drift up to Sonoma and talk things over with Danny
Randall," replied Johnny vaguely. "He had some sort of an idea of
extending this express service next year."

"And you?" Talbot turned to me.

"I," said I, firmly, "am going to turn over my share in a business
partnership with you; and in the meantime I expect to get a job driving
team with John McGlynn for enough to pay the board bill while you
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